Falling Man_ A Novel - Don Delillo [58]
He would tell her about Florence. She would say she knew something was going on but in view of the completely uncommon nature of the involvement, with its point of origin in smoke and fire, this is not an unforgivable offense.
He would tell her about Florence. She would say she could understand the intensity of the involvement, in view of the completely uncommon nature of its origin, in smoke and fire, and this would cause her to suffer enormously.
He would tell her about Florence. She would get a steak knife and kill him.
He would tell her about Florence. She would enter a period of long and tortured withdrawal.
He would tell her about Florence. She would say, After we’ve just renewed our marriage. She would say, After the terrifying day of the planes has brought us together again. How could the same terror? She would say, How could the same terror threaten everything we’ve felt for each other, everything I’ve felt these past weeks?
He would tell her about Florence. She would say, I want to meet her.
He would tell her about Florence. Her periodic insomnia would become total, requiring a course of treatment that includes diet, medication and psychiatric counseling.
He would tell her about Florence. She would spend more time at her mother’s apartment, accompanied by the kid, remaining there well into evening and leaving Keith to wander empty rooms on his return from the office, as in the meager seasons of his exile.
He would tell her about Florence. She would want to be convinced that it was over and he would convince her because it was true, simply and forever.
He would tell her about Florence. She would send him to hell with a look and then call a lawyer.
She heard the sound and looked to her right. A boy in the schoolyard was dribbling a basketball. The sound did not belong to the moment but he wasn’t playing, only walking, taking the basketball with him, absently bouncing it as he walked toward the fence, head up, eyes on the figure above.
Others followed. With the man in full view now, students advanced from the far end of the yard toward the fence. The man had affixed the safety harness to the rail of the platform. The students advanced from every point of the schoolyard to get a closer look at what was happening.
She moved back. She moved the other way, backing into the building that stood on the corner. Then she looked around for someone, just to exchange a glance. She looked for the crossing guard, who was nowhere in sight. She wished she could believe this was some kind of antic street theater, an absurdist drama that provokes onlookers to share a comic understanding of what is irrational in the great schemes of being or in the next small footstep.
This was too near and deep, too personal. All she wanted to share was a look, catch someone’s eye, see what she herself was feeling. She did not think of walking away. He was right above her but she wasn’t watching and wasn’t walking away. She looked at the teacher across the street, whistle pressed in one fist, string dangling, his other hand gripping the strands of the chain-link fence. She heard someone above her, in the apartment building that occupied the corner, a woman at the window.
She said, “What you doing?”
Her voice came from a point somewhere above the level of the maintenance platform. Lianne didn’t look. The street to her left was empty except for a ragged man coming out of the arch-way beneath the tracks, carrying a bicycle wheel in his hand. This is where she looked. Then, again, the woman’s voice.
She said, “I call nine one one.”
Lianne tried to understand why he was here and not somewhere else. These were strictly local circumstances, people in windows, some kids in a schoolyard. Falling Man was known to appear among crowds or at sites where crowds might quickly form. Here was an old derelict rolling a wheel down the street. Here was a woman in a window, having to ask who he was.
Other voices now, from the projects and the schoolyard, and she looked up again. He stood balanced